


Oz Comes Back

by jackofallfics



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Gen, Platonic Relationships, Season/Series 07, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-02-24 01:14:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23901280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jackofallfics/pseuds/jackofallfics
Summary: After Willow's encounter with The First, she doesn't expect to see another former lover. But when Oz shows up on the doorstep of Scooby Central, she finds out how ready she was to be comforted by someone who once knew her so well.Prompted by my dislike of the character Kennedy. It's not exactly a fix-it fic, but that's how I think of it. Oneshot.
Relationships: Daniel "Oz" Osbourne & Willow Rosenberg
Comments: 5
Kudos: 6





	Oz Comes Back

Willow is spreading peanut butter on the lone slice of bread somehow overlooked by all of the Potentials when they hear the knock on the door. Buffy groans, striding determinedly toward the front of the house. “Where are they keeping all these girls? We don’t have room to—oh.”

“Hey, Buffy.” Willow fumbles her half sandwich, smearing peanut butter onto the corner of her mouth. Without really deciding to do so, she takes off sprinting to the door. “Oz!”

There he is, standing on her doorstep after nearly three years. “Oz! You’re here! Wow. Why are you here?” She sways back and forth in the doorway, not sure whether she should hug him in greeting.

“Hey, Willow." He's not surprised at her sudden appearance, or shy, or anything. Oz, even-keeled as always. "I heard there was a fight, a big one, and I thought I should come help out. Use my werewolf powers for good. I’m good with apocalypses.” Oz keeps his eyes on her as he speaks, and he only turns to look at Buffy well after she starts speaking.

“You heard about the new Big Bad, huh? And how did you do that, may I ask?”

“I may have been in Tibet, but I still have the internet. The entire town of Sunnydale emptying out makes news, if you know where to look.”

“And we all know what that means.” Buffy had been leaning against the door, cool and relaxed, but still blocking the entrance. Now she moves, waving him into the house. “Welcome to Casa Slayer. Chock full of underage girls we’re training to replace me in the event of my likely demise. Good luck finding a place to sleep.”

“Thanks for the welcome.” Once again, his eyes slide away from Buffy and meet Willow’s. She thinks she understands the question she sees in his eyes. It’s not about the sandwich still in her hand or the bit of peanut butter she wasn’t able to lick away.

“I’m sleeping on the floor because of the Potential in my bed. But, I think we can kick her out and swap places. You’re new, and it’s only fair, take time about.” She knows without looking that Buffy is smirking as she turns away and heads back into the kitchen. Willow can’t look away, not when Oz is back and smiling at her like he understands everything about her, from her loneliness to her desperate desire to never again be the reason her friends worry about the apocalypse.

“Sounds good to me.” He hefts his duffel bag over his shoulder, and she leads him up the stairs to the bedroom she has been sharing with a girl who most definitely is not Tara.

* * *

“Well, she’s a charmer.”

“She’s young.” Privately, Willow agrees with Oz. When she had awkwardly told Kennedy about the change in sleeping arrangements, the look on the girl’s face had changed from suspicious to downright hateful of Oz. She had roughly grabbed the sleeping bag and pillow Willow had been using and stomped out of the bedroom, loudly running downstairs. Willow regretted the loss of her favorite pillow, but at least the bed still had two pillows on it. “But admittedly a little possessive. It’s creepy. She’s wanted to jump my bones since she got here.”

“I’m sorry.” From anyone else, it wouldn’t be enough. But this was Oz, always a man of few words. And she preferred it to Xander’s slightly offensive jokes when she tried to talk about Kennedy with him, or Buffy’s curt “So kick her out.” Sweet, sensitive Oz waited to take a cue from her.

She hadn’t seen him in years—one-seventh of her life. She hadn’t been with him for longer still. While she was with Tara, she had gone days at a time forgetting that Oz existed. While with Tara, she didn’t regret being cheated on, or doing the cheating, and she didn’t miss the long stretch of love and warmth and fun in between their two bad decisions. But while she was in England, alone with Giles, Willow had remembered all the people she had loved and lost. She thought of Tara (god how she had thought of Tara), but she also thought of Amy, and her mother. She thought of Buffy and Xander and Dawn, and even Anya. And she thought of Oz.

And now Oz was here, standing beside her bed wearing what looked like the same clothes she remembered him sleeping in while they were dating. Same style, at least. And she was standing at the foot of the bed, staring at him, wanting. She didn’t want him sexually, no. Gay now, still. She wanted the comfort of an old love, and the last time she thought she had had that, it had actually been The First. It messed her up, believing for one shocked second that Tara actually wanted her to commit suicide.

“You don’t have to worry about me.” She had spaced too long. What? “I left—” He looks down, then up at her again. “Someone is waiting for me. Back home.”

“Oh?” She hadn’t been expecting that.

“Yeah, she. It turns out there are werewolves in Tibet, too.” Willow doesn’t know why she hadn’t been expecting that.

“Oh. Oh, that’s good.” She darts to the light switch by the bedroom door, still looking away. “I’m glad for you. Bed?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah,” Oz replies. She hears him rustling the covers as she flicks the switch and makes her way back to her side of the bed, knowing her way in the dark.

Lying beside Oz again is uncomfortable. They’re not together—after his statement, even less so than they would have been anyway. She lies rigid, strangely afraid of any part of her body touching his. She is hyperaware that this was the first body she curled up to naked, slept beside careless and happy, come back to her.

It feels like an hour passes, neither of them stretching and relaxing. Surprisingly, Oz is the one to break the silence. “So, what’s the game plan?”

“Game plan?”

“You know. Averting the apocalypse, Potentials, all that.”

“Oh, right. That game plan.” At dinner, she and Xander and Dawn had talked over each other filling Oz in, with Buffy and the girls chiming in when they could. But there were some things, most things, they couldn’t tell him about with the Potentials around, and Oz knows that without being told. Now she begins to fill him in on what they’ve uncovered, where she thinks they’ll go from there. But she can’t keep it up. Every potential plan could be solved with the shortcut of her using her magic, and thinking of her magic still makes her think of why she lost it, and when she thinks of Tara, she loses any hope of staying in the here and now.

“I wish you could have known Tara. She had a good soul, you know?”

“I know you, and if you loved her that much, she must have been something special. The apocalypse, wow.”

“Yeah, I know. Didn’t think I had it in me, did you?”

“Well, I’ve always known you’re pretty powerful. But you didn’t have it in you in the end, did you? I mean, you didn’t do it. We’re still here.” The room is dark, but Willow can still tell by his voice that Oz is smiling that little smile, just a crook on one side.

“We’re still here.” Willow grows somber. “I don’t know how we’re gonna get out of this one, Oz. None of the girls have Buffy’s power, I can’t, won’t use my magic. We have Buffy, and maybe Faith, and maybe Spike, but not Angel or—” She’s spiraling again, as she used to in England. She hasn’t done that so much lately, now that she’s back with the people she loves, even if everything is different. She takes a deep breath. “I’m glad you’re back, Oz. You know, werewolf power.” She pumps a fist in the air, trying to defuse the weight of emotion that had filled their words ever since she gave in to the urge to talk about her dead lover.

“I can’t say how much difference I’m gonna make with that ‘werewolf power,’” Oz replies. He turns his head on the pillow to face her, and that shift is all it takes for their shoulders to finally touch. “But I’m gonna do all I can. I’m not leaving this time. Well, not leaving until we beat the Big Bad.”

“And then it’s back to Tibet.”

“Yeah.” Willow doesn’t know what to say, but after a pause, Oz continues. “I hope you get to see the world, once this is all done. Sunnydale is… Well, it’s a small town and a hellmouth both. And I know you’ve been to England, but just for rehab. I want more than that for you. There’s something about being free and untethered.”

“And then tethered again,” Willow adds, thinking about the someone Oz has waiting.

“Yeah. That. I want that for you too, Will.”

“Thanks, Oz.”

They don’t kiss, and they don’t cuddle. But the tension is gone, and Willow once again finds it relaxing to share a bed with Oz. After all this time they should have been strangers, but the core of him is the same person he was in high school. Before she knows it she is asleep, and for just a few hours, the apocalypse is no more real than a dream.


End file.
